Worlds that aren't the Actual World

In this post i'm going to give a cursory introduction to possible worlds talk as it is relevant to my project, so that I have something to refer back to when relevant.

So there's this world. Take the world to be everything. That is, everything there is. Worlds aren't planets, they're whole realms of being. So everything that you think of as true is true of this world. Now take one of those truths...for instance, Joe Biden is vice president. Now, you might want to say that the proposition expressed by the sentence "Joe Biden is vice president" has interesting properties besides being true. It also has the property of being contingent. That is, it didn't have to be true, and that's an interesting difference between the proposition expressed by "Joe Biden is vice president" and "all triangles are trilateral".

Martini Realism!

These metaphysical disputes, Hirsch points out, seem rather different from disputes about whether the Loch Ness monster exists, or whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They are more like the dispute between the purist who says that only cocktails made of gin or vodka, dry vermouth, and perhaps an olive or two count as martinis, and the sorority girl who calls practically anything a martini as long as it served in the classic V-shaped glass. If these two are seated at a table on which such a glass contains some nonsense made of sour green apple liqueur, the latter will say that there is a martini there, and the former will deny it. This is a paradigm case of a verbal dispute. The disputants agree on all the facts, but disagree on how to use the word ‘martini’. (The purist is of course right about the use of the word. remember that there can be verbal disputes in which one side is straightforwardly mistaken!)

Karen Bennett "Composition, Colocality and Metaontology"

It's rare that a philosophical example is as revealing and insightful concerning the content of the example as they are concerning the philosophical concept that the example is wheeled in to elucidate.

Make thy presence known

I have reason to believe some folks are reading this...but I don't have any way of knowing who or how many! One of the reasons my last blog never took off was because I never committed to posting regularly. One of the reasons I never posted regularly was because I thought (correctly) that no one read. A vicious cycle, you see. I'm doing better this time around, but do me a fave and comment from time to time, so I don't fall into the same rut.

Also, The Books.

Go Blue Team!

Yesterday Lindsey and I did our global duty and watched the world cup (loved it!). It was an epic finish, yada yada, but something interesting happened. Lindsey and I don't know anything about soccer, or the teams playing. We decided ahead of time that we were both going to be rooting for the Netherlands...because the Netherlands were underdogs. And we like underdogs. Also, Amsterdam.

Fucose mutarotase is queer

Studies like these always worry me. While many people see in them the opportunity to decisively demonstrate that homosexuality is not a choice, I see them as both (a) further entrenching an ideology according to which sexuality is a binary determinate property that accurately draws the line down the middle of two different 'kinds' of person, and (b) offering up hope to parents that might want to prevent gayness through genetic engineering, and doctors that would like to profit off of them.

Vanilla extract

As of yesterday I have some 60 oz. of homemade vanilla extract! Back in May, I bought Madagascar vanilla beans on E-bay. I bought a pint of rum, a pint of brandy and a pint of vodka, and three glass jars that cork.

Twerp

I had a feeling we were overestimating that proton.